Monday, April 4, 2011

I read somewhere that vis-a-vis our population, Malaysia has a significant percentage of membership in social media sites like Facebook, My Space and Twitter. Malaysians also make up a sizable number of bloggers. Given the borderless world where technology is concerned, everyone is equally vulnerable to security hiccups anywhere in the world, and equally liable to fall prey to scammers, hackers and the like.

I read about a med student who on March 24 clicked on a Facebook user's link to vote in a competition led to her receiving a message, allegedly from the hacker, saying that he would hack into her Facebook account unless she paid him RM200.

He also threatened that he would create and post fake nude pictures of her on her Facebook account.

She deleted all her pictures in her Facebook and even changed her name and thought it would be the end of it, but he still managed to upload her picture onto her Facebook account and revert it to her real name.

The hacker had given her a mobile phone number and also a bank account number. She managed to trace a photograph of the suspect based on the suspect's mobile phone number and made a police report in Pengkalan Chepa, Kelantan.

MCA Public Services and Complaints Department head Datuk Michael Chong, who highlighted the case, said that the department had received nine similar complaints last year and four cases were reported to him this year, including this case.

Unfortunately, nothing in this world is foolproof. We just need to take proper precautions so that we do not expose ourselves to liabilities.

oh that's very terrible.. but i guess once you're into the internet, nothing is safe.. all are transparent and you are revealing everything about yourself, so we should always be cautious and stay alert on what we are doing to minimise the impact..